Meet the manchineel tree! It’s incredibly toxic: just standing underneath it can cause horrible blisters. Its sap contains phorbal (which is water soluble, making this a bad place to stand in a rainstorm) which causes a strong inflammatory response and promotes tumour formation.

The manchineel tree is native to southern North America to northern South America.

Its fruit look like small apples, hence one Spanish name is manzanilla de la muerte, "little apple of death” 💀

Do not eat.

Since it’s #PeriodicTableDay a reminder that when the official discovery of element 117 was announced I, for laughs, proposed it be named octarine (Oc) in honour of Sir Terry Pratchett (who had died a few months before).

The petition went viral and got over 51k signatures.

Sadly, IUPAC weren’t having it and 117 was eventually named tennessine (Ts), after Tennessee where the Oak Ridge National Laboratory is based.

Which. Fine.

It clearly wasn’t *precisely* a million-to-one chance.

(1/2)